Data centers are buildings or portions of buildings that house electronic equipment, such as telecommunications equipment, networking equipment, computer systems like servers, and so on, along with mechanical equipment like air conditioning units and signal and power cable routing structures required for operation of the electronic equipment. Current data centers generally have a raised floor and under-floor plenum, and may have a separate plenum between the structural ceiling and a drop-down ceiling, for air circulation for heating, ventilation and air conditioning. Such plenum spaces may also be used to house signal and/or power cables and the ancillary hardware required to organize, support and manage such cabling.
In a raised floor structure, the data center includes a slab floor over which is positioned an elevated, or raised, floor on which equipment, including equipment racks and air conditioning units, may be placed. The space underneath the raised floor may be used, in addition to routing signal and power cables, to house an electrical ground grid or mesh for the data center equipment, and to provide passage for the air flow required to maintain the equipment at desired operating temperatures.
Data center design has shifted, however, away from the extensive use of the raised floor plenum for housing cabling. Instead, it is preferred to keep the raised floor plenum relatively uncluttered to ensure the unrestricted flow of air to cool data center equipment. As a result of this design shift, cabling and its associated support hardware is increasingly being displaced to overhead areas on top of, and above, the upper surfaces of equipment racks and cabinets located in the data center, and upwardly toward the ceiling region of the data center.
As a result, cables are increasingly being positioned within the data center in locations remote from the electrical ground mesh which typically remains in the raised floor plenum. This increasing physical separation of the upwardly positioned cabling and the electrical ground mesh within the raised floor plenum causes an undesirable increase in the electromagnetic susceptibility and emissions of the data center. This occurs because the physical separation of the cabling and the electrical ground mesh creates a large pick-up area of an inductive loop within the data center, as will be appreciated by those of ordinary skill in the art. It may also create an increased risk of data center equipment damage due to a nearby lightning strike or high power electrical ground fault. There is thus a need for improved data center structures that mitigate the electrical and mechanical challenges created by such data center design changes to provide reliable operation of the data center.